The Hacker
by c101
Summary: Jason wasn't an avid gamer, so he shouldn't be dreaming of having certain blue boxes hindering his vision. Eventually he decided to take the red pill and went to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. 🌍 ❓
1. Creep

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**[MAIN QUEST ALERT: Get Even With Her - PART 1]**

Your work colleague, Sarah, likes to slack off, giving you more work to do while she surfs the web.  
You would want to get access to her work email account.  
**Time limit: 1 day**  
**Completion reward: 100 Exp + ? ? ? Title**  
**Failure: Termination of Contract**  
_This Quest is mandatory. Completion or Failure will decide your future._

Jason wasn't that all too much surprised by the blue annoying pop up which took a quarter of his vision. He was an avid reader of the genre. More, importantly, he already saw incomprehensible anomalies on his way to work. He did consider going to a doctor, but he really, really, didn't want to get the diagnosis that he had a mental illness.

Well, the amount of work in the company that barely could afford to pay his rent, was enough to get him several mental disorders.

With a heavy sigh, Jason hoped against all naysayers who would decried him as delusional, that the blue boxes were not a symptom of a particular disease but instead something more or far grander, from the guy in the sky maybe, he guessed.

"Status." The famous words spoken in all seriousness. He felt a light blush creep upon his cheeks. Luckily, his colleague were working or slacking off, ignoring him.

**[STATUS NOT AVAILABLE UNTIL THE COMPLETION OF THE TUTORIAL]**

Well, shit.

"Well, it shouldn't be too hard to get access to Sarah's email, right?" Thought Jason while his fingers tapped the table in a steady rhythm. A habit of his, inherited from his dad.

Normally, he wouldn't even entertain the idea of doing something illegal, above all, he considered himself a good person, however he was just too pissed. Because of her, his work tripled, no, quadrupled.

He bet she regularly exercised her physical needs with the boss.

Jason looked to the side and saw Sarah tipping away on her iPhone, the latest one apparently. Her sugar daddy was probably some rich guy.

On the display, he saw a yellow notice with something scribbled which he guessed was the password for the work computer. He knew that the company policy was for the users to change the password after getting it the first time. Although, some of his colleagues used the onetime password even to this day.

Jason was an avid reader. That was an understatement. He read everything from fictions to technical blogs of Security Researchers. One of them once remarked that most people use the same password for everything. To say that he was right would be an understatement of the 21st century.

He stopped his tapping, leaned into his chair as if he was making himself comfortable and took out his smartphone. He hoped he gave others the illusion that he used his phone to text. With the back camera he zoomed until he could read the scribble.

He paused, raising one of his eyebrows as he read it out loud, another habit of his, "Hank0904"

Well, well, he did suspected their strange relationship, after all, Hank was his boss. If it was as he suspected the probability that she would reuse the password for her work email account would be high.

Should he try to log into her email account?

But first, taking advantage of another one of his habits which was to document everything, he snapped a photo. Unfortunately, he forgot that he didn't disabled the lighting. Unsurprisingly, he got her attention.

With an angry face, her aggressive frown would gave him over 9000 damage if he was in a game, she called him out. "What the fuck were you doing creep?! Did you seriously take a picture of me?"

**[You completed Get Even With Her - PART 1]**  
**You gained 100 Experience points and the title Creep!**


	2. Suspicious Activities

**01010011 01110101 01110011 01110000 01101001 01100011 01101001 01101111 01110101 01110011 00100000 01000001 01100011 01110100 01101001 01110110 01101001 01110100 01101001 01100101 01110011**

Unfortunately, Jason didn't know what the title did to him. He prayed silently that it wasn't a massive debuff.

He cursed once again the blue boxes or whatever the hell it was, because he couldn't access the status page, not until he accomplished the so called tutorial. It wasn't even a beginner tutorial where he would learn the basics like in most games.

**[MAIN QUEST ALERT: Get Even With Her - PART 2]**  
Now that you have access to her work email, it is time to check it out.  
**Time limit: 1 day**  
**Completion reward: 100 Exp + ? ? ? Skill**  
**Failure: ? ? ?**  
_This Quest is mandatory. Completion or Failure will decide your future._

He was a little afraid of the consequence of failure, after all, question marks and that in triple combination was not a good sign at all. On the other hand, he was curious about the rewards, mostly about the mysterious skill he would get.

It followed the logic that the greater the rewards, the greater the punishment would be in case of failure. Or high risk, high reward. The point was actually moot, because he couldn't decline the quest.

Jason smiled self-deprecatingly, getting strange glances from his other colleagues. His father once said that if the situation was hopeless, he just would need to take a different perspective and evaluate it at the other side which was to say that he hoped he could assign character points after he completed the tutorial like in games.

So his next actions were clear. Log in into the email account. Crawling through her emails in search of... of what exactly? That was a question he couldn't answer, he just hoped that this quest chain would give him some hints.

Opening the standard email client, he entered Sarah's work email and her simple password. A click on the login button to begin the process of violating several laws. It wasn't that this time was his first lawbreaking action, rather the stakes were just high for him to be a nervous wrack. His increasingly tapping with his left foot was just one of the symptom.

He was in. He glanced left and right, making sure that no one noticed his strange behavior. Sighing in relief as his work colleagues were just doing their own things.

Well, the inbox only had 2 new emails. He should check them first before he went through the trash folder. Most people were lazy to delete the trash manually. In that case, the emails in the trash folder would only automatically be deleted under the circumstance that space wasn't enough as such they would be marked for deletion. However, because the IT department once got complains from the users about the deletion of certain emails, they went to high and above to configure the server so that it wouldn't normally delete the emails in 24 hours. Jason silently thanked these heroes for making his work easier.

Of course, in the corner of his eyes, he noticed Sarah who glanced at him warily. He grimaced a little bit. She thought him a creep. Apparently, his earlier action didn't endear him with her, who would have thought.

So he tried to relax himself, tried to ignore the distracting glances of her and tried to concentrate on the quest. Keyword, tried. It just wasn't possible for him.

In the end, he decided to do something against it. Snapping his head to Sarah, he straight up stared her into her widened green eyes. She went back to work, trying to ignore his stare. "Bitch. I win." Muttered Jason as he went back to the emails.

The first email was from Hank interestingly. He opened it.  
FROM: hank(dôt)grunner30(ât)upswink(dôt)com  
TO: sarah(dôt)wellington22(ât)upswink(dôt)com  
SUBJECT: Next time  
TEXT: I've found a nice hotel where we could do it next time, baby.

A very personal email. Well, he knew that the boss was married. That wasn't a very good husband. He pitied the poor wife of his.

He waited a little bit. No, completion prompt. Which meant that there was something more. So he dig deeper.

The second email was a simple email from a customer. But that wasn't the curious thing, rather the customer was someone important, a VIP. Mister Josef Jackson, old money guy.

Wait a moment. Something didn't make sense. The amount of order was totally not suspicious. His sarcasm leaked a little there at the content of the email. Unfortunately, the email didn't went into details. He concluded that this wasn't the only email from the VIP, so he went to the trash folder to dig others from the same sender by using the filter.

The results were surprisingly shocking. The filter spat out an untold amount of emails, indicating a correspondence of years. The corruption, it could only be corruption, ran deeper than he thought. More importantly, he got the completion prompt.

**[You completed Get Even With Her - PART 2]**  
**You gained 100 experience points and the [OBSERVE] skill.**

The skill he gained was certainly of interest, so he decided to experiment with it. He tried to concentrate on the skill in his mind. Not seconds later, a pop up claimed his vision.

**[OBSERVE: ACTIVE]**  
A simple general skill that gives once activated on an object or a creature, a little prompt filled with information about the object or creature.  
_To activate the skill you need to either vocalize or think it._  
_RESTRICTION: Only in the tutorial you can activate the skill without limit._

"Only in tutorial doesn't it have a limit, " muttered Jason while he stroked his well groomed short beard, "wouldn't that be exploitable?" It couldn't be a bug, right?

His inner min-maxing gamer grinned at the thought of abusing the shit out of it while being in the tutorial phase. Slowly a grin made itself known on his face as he chuckled lightly.

"Fucking creep." Of course, Sarah wouldn't not notice every creepy action he took. The title was obvious enough. He wouldn't need the status page to confirm that.

Speaking of the devil, the next quest prompt appeared.

**[MAIN QUEST ALERT: Get Even With Her - PART 3]**  
Sarah Wellington is deeply embedded in corruption with the VIP. However, you did not find anything suspicious about your boss besides that his wife did not satisfy him enough. Perhaps a slight detour is necessary to evaluate him. Observe your boss.  
**Time limit: 1 month from now**  
**Completion reward: 500 Exp + random skill book**  
**Failure: ? ? ?**  
_This quest is mandatory. Completion or Failure will decide your future._

Jason found the clue about his active skill far too obvious, well, at least it gave hints. The time limit was perfect for his future plan which was to abuse the tutorial by using his active skill as much as possible in every way possible. What deeply concerned him was the failure part and the size of experience points. It meant that the difficulty was higher. He didn't really want to experience failure. He hated losing.

Before he continued to consider the quest, he made a backup of all the suspected emails by downloading them on his work computer. After that, he saved them onto his phone.

That done, he just let himself fall into the chair like a sack of potato.

Unfortunately, for him, the boss came in that exact moment, walking along the cubicles, watching the workers like a hawk, but most importantly, fucking Hank caught him doing absolutely nothing.

What would happen with the quest if he didn't work anymore in the company?

Well, he was in deep shit, now.


	3. Observe

**01001111 01100010 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110110 01100101**

Jason remembered once a time where he stood in front of the principal after he beat up some kids in his time in high school. He was a little bit nostalgic as he stood in front of his boss who sat in the very cushy chair, befitting of someone in higher position. Alright, he was a little bit jealous, after all, who wouldn't. That chair was a masterpiece.

Hank let him stand, waiting in silence as the he typed something on his computer. Jason hated these power plays. He despised them. Yet, as much as he hated it, he understood the underlining logic of it. Humans were hierarchical animals.

Instead of waiting and letting his boss win his little childish game, he concentrated on the skill [OBSERVE] to activate it. He looked at his boss and saw a little blue pop up.

**Level 3, Hank Grunner**  
_An unfaithful husband with three children._

Well, he already did know that. Perhaps, he would need to level up the skill, but he didn't know if it was possible. His knowledge came from outdated games he played in his childhood. On the other hand, if he should meet total strangers, he could use the gained information. So it wasn't that it was useless, on the contrary, it was powerful in the right situations.

He could test the skill on computers or even applications. He needed to establish the limits of this skill.

"You should know why you are here, Jason." Apparently, his boss was satisfied enough to grace him with his time.  
"Well, I just took a little break after some hard work." Yes, he bullshitted without shame. Because the company didn't deserve his loyality one bit.  
"Do you really think I am that fucking stupid?" The murderous face of Hank was nothing to scoff at, it gave him a little chill.  
"The others complained about your work ethic. That means, yes, your 'excuse'" - the boss made the air quotes with his massive fingers full of hairs - "is totally bullshit." Jason bit back the retort which was to say that his so called colleagues were all backstabbers. After all, in a company with a zero-sum policy, the employees were encouraged to do some goddamn medieval court intrigue to get ahead in the game of thrones. He couldn't hide his little amused smile from his boss.

"You think that's fucking funny? Alright, Jason, you are fucking fired! So get your ass out of my fucking office!"

"Yeah, fuck you, too!" At least, he had the last words, thought Jason while fuming at the pure bullshit. Admittedly, it wasn't the first time he slacked off and was caught, but he worked hard. Hank should know that, because he was the one who gave him second chances. But it seemed that there was something more brewing in the company.

While taking his things from his loyal cubicle, he ignored Sarah's smirk full of schadenfreude. He didn't need to activate his skill for that but he did it nevertheless in the hope that it actually leveled up. Obviously, it told him nothing of note, except that she was a fucking level 5.

He could only guess what that meant. Either like most of the games, it was because of quests or grinding. Whichever it was, it would have to wait after the tutorial. But... Wait. What if he could just observe himself?

That should be possible with a mirror. However, he wasn't that optimistic, mostly because it would be an obvious exploit that a game developer would notice very fast.

Well, he would need to try that after he got to his apartment. Fuck, he would need to pay the rent which was due in two weeks. He could imagine his luck stat already which was to say a very low value.

Of course, before he went out of the building, he flipped off his ex-colleagues.

As he walked the narrow sparse street in the cold light rain, he was little bit tense, waiting for the failing quest prompt which should be awaiting him. Yet, after more minutes, he finally could sigh in relief, knowing that it wasn't a factor in failing the quest. That interestingly meant, that he could be a little bit more creative in completing the quest. He loved to play sandbox games.

For a moment, he considered stalking Hank and observing him constantly. But in the end, he decided against it, because he would first need to test the limits of the skill.

That was the reason why he constantly engaged the skill on trash, cars or buildings, people (mostly homeless) and even the rain itself which gave him nothing of interest to digest. Just as he walked by an impressively tuned sports car, a prompt alerted him.

**LEVEL UP! **  
**[OBSERVE] Level 1 - Level 2 **  
_Can now give information of what an object contains._

**Ford GT**  
_A sports car which was fully tuned by John Harrison at the car workshop BestTuning.  
The car trunk carries cocaine, a golden Desert Eagle, a Benelli Nova shotgun and a M4A1 US rifle with ammunition._

Jason was sure that he should report that to the police as a good citizen. And that wasn't even the tip of the ice berg, because it wasn't the only impressive looking sport car, he observed. Well, he didn't like unnecessary problems. So he ignored his findings and walked home, a little bit faster. It was just that he didn't trust his treasonous luck stat not to betray him at the worst moment.

At last he arrived at the building where his apartment was. He sped a little bit more as he saw the figure of his landlord, a stern old man with too much time on his hand. Choosing to better evade his landlord, Jason didn't use the elevator, but instead the stairs. The landlord hated moving his old body.

His apartment was humble, nothing to show off to his future wife; it would just be an embarrassment. Small with little furniture. He didn't need that much, only his computer and router. He powered it on, letting it boot while he went to the bathroom to test the skill.

In front of the mirror which was a little bit cracked with bad cut corners, he activated his skill.

The suspense nearly got him as he heard a sound, but it was just the Operating System saying hello. Moments later, a blue box popped up.

**Level 1, Jason Rong, Creep**

His smile fell off his face as he read the title he got. Ah, well, at least he could see his own level. He gloated at the Game Developers who designed this. Jason: 1. Devs: 0.

Now that he would need to test the skill against his computer and the applications he installed. He was giddy with excitement at the thought of using **[OBSERVE]** to get possible secret information out of the applications.

He had a month to conclude the investigation of the corruption in the company upSwink. In other words, enough time to play with the skill and to develop a strategy to complete the quest. So dozens little blue boxes swarmed his vision. With a groan, he massaged his forehead as he felt the incoming headache. Well, too much information was too much, so he decided to only absolutely focus on one thing at a time.

A simple application would be a good first test which was in his case a simple PowerShell script that does nothing more than printing the famous line: 'Hello, World!'. He focused on the script as he felt the skill activating, something that he got after the Level Up. It seemed the higher the level, the more pronounced was the activation, or it was just the alcohol. Yes, he went to buy himself a gift. A cheer to the better future with this ability like a main character in a chinese webnovel with his' or her's the golden finger which was hilarious in his opinion.

**PowerShell Script**  
_A simple PowerShell script written by Jason Rong on 2nd May 2019 at 12:22 a.m., which uses the keyword Write-Host to print the string 'Hello, World!' in the output stream._

It gave him a precise date and clock. That was important information in the hands of certain skilled people. But for him, it was useless, at least, for now. More interestingly, it was detailed. Perhaps he should use the skill on an executable. So he did.

Jason did test the skill on every executable he had installed. He discovered that the skill was too detailed, well, actually, because of his low knowledge, he would easily be confused by the amount of data he received. At a first glance, it looked just like an esoteric structure of data, however he could recognize some patterns because of his knowledge of the PowerShell scripting language. After a lot of research, he found out that he could get the original source code of an executable without even trying to reverse engineer it with an disassembler which was a computer program that translated machine language into assembly language, a low-level programming language, low-level because it was close to the hardware. Essentially, the skill was OP, PLZ NERF!

Hours went by as he experimented with the skill, trying to use it on specific functions of an application. On web applications, he explored the deep of the skill. With a maniacal laugh, he laid exhausted on the ground as he contemplated his life. He could actually use the skill to find security holes in an application. That was a scary thought. Unfortunately, he feared that it would be heavily restricted after the tutorial.

The skill was insane, thought Jason as he went deep into a dream filled slumber.


	4. Beginning of the Journey

**alert('Beginning of the Journey')**

Jason slowly awoke from his deep slumber with a headache, courtesy of the alcohol he drunk. He forced himself to ignore his headache until he found the pills. With gritted teeth, he got up and almost tripped over a empty bottle.

In the bathroom, he puked into the toilet. The bitter bile wasn't a nice aftertaste. He pushed himself with a little bit strength from the toilet seat to get up. His hands grabbed into the cupboard, searching for the holy grail against headaches.

It wasn't long till he got his hands onto the Aspirin. He took some pills and swallowed them down with the help of his good friend, Mr. Water. He didn't need to wait long before the effects took hold of his body and banished the cursed headache which plagued him since the sun went down.

Step one to clear his mind finished. Achievement unlocked.

Jason giggled in a disturbing manner at his own pathetic joke. The joke was on him. His life was now a game. He didn't know which kind of genre, but he would be very happy if one of his childhood dream would come true which was destroyed as he grew up and found out that there wasn't magic in the world at all.

Although, considering the skill **[OBSERVE]**, one could say that it was magic in a way. Well, his ability couldn't be explained with conventional science. Indeed, any sufficient advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic or so went the quote of his favorite science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke.

He shook his head, trying to banish all the silly notions. He would need to step up his A game to pay off his rent in two weeks, after all, he was unemployed now. With a yawn, he went to his computer, opened his research notes on the skill. The most useful conclusion from his research was that he could use the skill to find bugs, a flaw in the software through which one could, if one was malicious, exploit it. Of course, bugs could even be dangerous without an active malicious actor trying to exploit it. A simple bug in the software on the computer of an airplane could lead to a big mess, well, that would be an understatement, because that would be a disaster, costing not only money but even lives.

He could use the open source projects to grind his skill to a high level. Millions were awaiting his salvation. His laugh transformed into a coughing fit at the slightly megalomaniac thought. Fuck, he was too dehydrated.

Mr. Water helped him again. What a hero, Jason thought amused.

There he went again. He didn't know if something snapped in him since he got the ability, but he sometimes went to silly tangents to cheer himself up like a mental defense mechanism.

"Back to work." Jason declared while grinning crazily.

The open source projects would solve his grinding problem, however it wouldn't really solve his financial situation.

He hummed in thought as ideas flashed through his mind until he stumbled onto one, he read once on a blog from a famous bug hunter. Bug bounties. That would make use of his skill to turn it into profit. Unfortunately, he wouldn't know where to begin. The problem was that he could recognize a bug with the skill, but he couldn't exploit it and that was the crux. He wasn't knowledgeable in that area.

Well, that just meant he would need to learn. But that was for the future. He would need to gain money now. The key to that lied in the incredible versatile skill.

Jason had a feeling that he forgot something important. He didn't like to forget things, it was something of an obsession of his. That meant, he went to obscene amount of effort to remember it. It was like a constant droning in his mind. He couldn't find any peace until he once remembered it.

In wasn't long before he got his Eureka moment. Of course, he sometimes got ahead of himself in several ways to his own detriment. That meant he skipped the small, but important steps. The bug bounties of big companies like Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook and co. were obviously out of his realm of expertise. He would indeed not be knowledgeable enough to get one of these big fat bounties without more advanced knowledge and practice.

But for the small bounties with less Bug Hunters and difficulty, it wouldn't be hard for him to turn his practiced skill set which he, out of boredom mind you, had applied to wargame challenges, courtesy of the project OverTheWire. Most importantly, he knew that one of the most common vulnerability that existed on the modern web was XSS (Cross-site scripting) found on web applications. When people think of XSS, many would scoff at it, thinking that it was an old thing out of a myth, however, unfortunately for the world and fortunately for him, it did exist and even thrived. Of course, sanitizing plugins and frameworks that could clean up the possible malicious input, helped and even closed the common attack vectors. Yet, that wasn't enough because, like someone once remarked, the web was utterly broken as it was innovative.

The fault as every security problem lied in the hands of a human who was the weakest link in the chain.

Now, Cross-site scripting was an interesting side effect of not sanitizing user input, and to differentiate it, in the database as persistent XSS and in the browser as reflected XSS. Both can be severe depending on the circumstances. For example, while a persistent XSS made it possible for the attacker to inject a crafted malicious payload on the server, so that it would serve compromised web pages to the browser of the client which would execute the JavaScript code, a reflected XSS could be used to target one or more users to let their browsers execute JavaScript code from the URLs alone.

Funnily enough, most would think of JavaScript when they would hear XSS, because, well it was unfortunately a common vector to inject code. It wasn't that the programming language was at fault and like with C, a low-level programming language that didn't hold the hands of the programmer and as such mistakes were easy to make, meant that the programmer must code defensive. In other words, he was responsible for making sure his code was safe for production. The problem lied here in that most didn't have the necessary education or even motivation (like some short-sighting companies).

But most excitingly, with Electron, a framework that was developed for creating native desktop applications with web technologies, opened another can of worms that brought XSS into the fold.

That meant, desktop apps which used Electron like Discord, were vulnerable if, no rather when a flaw was found in the framework that let malicious actors exploit all these apps for whatever gain. It would be like having the water supply poisoned in a city by a terrorist. Simple said, every app developer using that framework would be fucked without lube.

The conclusion was that he should be able to get enough bounties to pay off his rent. Although, it wasn't a very good long-term prospect if you weren't advanced like some famous Bug Hunters who were payed in the six digits or more for private programs. Such programs were invite-only based on reputation, so no chance for him to get that much money.

Jason had decided on his next course of action, so he went to browse the internet after Bug Bounty Programs, specifically on web applications. He found a project that concentrated all Bug Bounty Programs on its platform so that Bug Hunter wouldn't need to manually search the internet. After he chose the filter and applied them, a list of programs was listed on the web page. It listed from smallest bounty which was 200 dollar to the lowest which was 10 dollar. Of course, the bounty wasn't really set in stone, mostly depending on the severity of the bug. The severity of a bug could be classified in low, medium, high or very high, each class depending on the possible risk of exploitation and which or what would be at risk after a successful exploitation of the bug transforming it into a security vulnerability.

He would need to get a grip on himself as he felt his finger trembling a little at the nervousity. It was his first time after all to participate in a Bug Bounty Program. His successful exploit adventures were only practiced in controlled wargame challenges. Some were admittingly realistic scenarios while others depended on many lucky factors which were already factored in the games. An apt description for bug hunting would be a hunt after the elusive Easter egg in a game. One would need to have Lady Luck at his side.

The thought of luck at his side brought a slight chuckle from him, be cause he knew that he wouldn't need that much luck as he had his, ah, skill. He was, indeed, eh, a skilled human.

Jason stretched himself as he chose a offered program that would let him test his skill on a web application in a test environment separate from the web app in production. In layman terms, he could go nuts on it without worrying about possible damage.

The work of a Bug Hunter mostly consisted of getting more information about the target either through manually crawling the web or spydering, in Jason's case, the web application. However, active spydering was something not normally done without explicit permission from the owner, because it was an active 'attack' on the web app that could lead to a crash. Fortunately, it was a test environment for the purpose of being discarded and he had explicit permission from the mission statement. Of course, he could passively spyder it by using Google or other search machines without once visiting the website. Depending on the circumstances, this would be necessary. For now, it wasn't.

Normally, or for most hunters out there, using a tool to automate spydering or other actions was considered necessary since most web applications were giants. Such tools were developed to automate boring things like common attack payloads or finding restricted web pages. It was a double-edged sword because while it could save time by narrow the possible bug, it could miss or even ignore many subtle bugs that could be exploited by someone sufficient creative.

The web application loaded into his browser was a simple online game that was very popular by children. It looked alright for him. Indulging his little fancy, he played a little around with the game. It was modeled after the famous Snake, only that you had opponents in form of other players.

That done, he noticed the game had a chat function which he could test with his skill. **[OBSERVE]** gave him enough data to deduce the possible plugins that were used client and server side to sanitize the input. He discovered that the filter was custom developed by the game developers after some search because he couldn't find any information on any website of it. He didn't mean the language filter, but the little software that blocked any malicious input. It was interestingly enough a blacklist filter, and contrary to a whitelist, wasn't seriously recommended by the security community. That was mostly because the web technologies would advance rapidly, so it made it impossible to defend against all cases. After all, the one who tried to defend all, was doomed to defend nothing, wasn't a famous saying for nothing.

This was very important, because he could use HTML injection, the attack vector which could be exploited by using HTML tags that could execute JavaScript. He would only have to use esoteric tags the devs forgot to include into the list.

"So which lucky tag is it?" Asked Jason out loud, a method to better conceptualize his ideas. "If I were the guy who built that piece of software, I would already have included the obvious tags to be blocked or thrown into nirvana." He browsed a good source of HTML reference to check the tags who could possible execute his payload.

"Perhaps, that particular tag. A good one. The image tag isn't that esoteric but it gets the job done." Now he would only need to bypass the sanitizer to get his payload into the webserver and onto the other users ingame, of course, in this case, he was the only player surrounded by bot 'players' in the test environment.

Another use of **[OBSERVE]** focused on the plugins for sanitizing user input, gave him the idea to use unicode characters to break the software by giving it the input it couldn't clean up correctly. A short-sighted implementation by the developers. He assumed that they weren't that well versed in security.

The last step was crafting the malicious input which was easy.

Now the moment of truth.

Even if he rational knew that he would successfully bypass the protections, he couldn't stop himself tapping his foot in a unsteady rhythm. Habits were habits.

As the famous alert box alerted him of the success, Jason felt the achievement. Drunk on his victory, he just sat there and closed his eyes, letting his mind wander.

The alert box was just a simple JavaScript command his payload called. Actually, his payload only consisted of alert(); which every Bug Hunter would only need for the most cases to know if he was successful or not.

He loved this. The victory over a challenge. That was the thing he was missing in the latest games.


	5. Interlude: I hate bugs!

**Interlude: I hate bugs!**

John was once a poor guy who worked overtime at a cheap restaurant to pay for his sister's hospital bills, getting insults thrown at him daily, yet, he withstood all that until he met someone at work, a new waiter who like him and others would have to work overtime to make ends meet. So he was sympathetic to the new guy, welcomed him with open arms and even tried to be a good 'senpai', yes, he was an Otaku.

He often liked to watch anime or reading manga while on his shift at times where the restaurant had less customers than the total number of waiters employed.

Meeting, this guy blew away his mind. John Harrison could with certainly say that Mark Austin was a genius. No, not a genius in that sense that he could easily calculate complex mathematical formulas in his head alone or other insane things, no, instead Mark took him into another world and shared his vision of a dead simple online game that would take the world by storm.

That game was Snake 2.0, a homage to the original game. The groundbreaking thing was the Multiplayer and some funny gimmicks targeted at the young audience. At first, he was naturally skeptical, because he didn't see the appeal until he had visited his sister in the hospital. Most of her time was spent on reading books or playing mobile games. At that moment, he could understand the genius behind Mark's idea. So, fully convinced, he went to buy himself enough energy drinks to last for an apocalypse and developed the first prototype, Snake 1.1, with input of Mark who went from the person at work to a trusted friend in no time.

He installed the prototype on his sister's phone and let her play test his first game. Her glowing face full of happiness was burned into his memory forever. It was as if he was born for it. For the appreciation of the players of his game.

To say that he knew how to develop software would totally underplay his education path. Before he worked at the restaurant, he went to a famous university for a, now most sought degree, which was the Bachelor of Computer Science. Unfortunately, he couldn't concentrate on his studies while working in several companies around the clock so that his sister could concentrate on her recovery without fretting over the slowly stacking bills that amounted to a big pile of capitalistic shit.

So he dropped out of the university, not regretting it, even if it was his childhood dream to develop video games, because in the end, he would do everything for his sister. He was that person.

He loved her dearly. Without parents, they were reliant on each other. Their parents died before she was even old enough to understand the gravity. He was five at that time, old enough to truly understand the pain, yet young enough that he had no control over his and her life. Foster parents took them up and with time he thought he could get over his pain.

Yet again, life took a different turn as they grew up.

No, he didn't want relieve that moment again. It was just that sometimes humans were irredeemable piece of shits. His sister felt prey to them and lost her ability to walk again. The doctors said that it was a psychological problem. Once again, he cursed the fact that he wasn't old enough at that time. If he had been just older... If.. if. That was his guilt. His burden alone.

Mark often told him that he was too hard on himself. Blaming everything on him, instead of the actual culprits. John didn't entertain the thought of getting psychological help. He just couldn't. Life molded him to be the strong shoulder his sister needed to carry her around in life, as such, he couldn't be weak even to others.

Sometimes, he tried to imagine how his life would have been if his parents had not died. Perhaps, he would be the big brother that his sister would despise, or he would even get a girlfriend. These were just fancy daydreams of his.

Or maybe he wouldn't even want to be a game developer. Strange, it would be.

The first game he ever played was Pokemon with his sister. That was, a 'shatterpoint' of his life. A point where he was locked into that path for the foresee future. The first joy of beating a game. The appreciation that people could develop such masterpieces. "What would you want to be?" His teacher had once asked him. "I want to create games!", was his enthusiastic reply.

"Really, John Harrison?" The time, his school teacher had called his full name, he could only count one time. The first time, he beat up others who had insulted his sister. It was an interesting habit of his teacher, he had observed.

As his sister went to the hospital in the long term ward, he wanted to buy her a gift. It was funny that he couldn't have thought of a better gift than some stuffed toys. Oh, she would have been happy enough, but he had known that she would have not been satisfied with that alone, so he had gone to his teacher for advice.

His teacher had asked him point blank. "Do you know manga?"

At his confused expression, the teacher had chuckled lightly, while taking something out of his bag with care as if it had been a treasure.

"This is One Piece." Declared his teacher in a strange grave tone he could not have understood at the time. Now, he knew that he had imitated the tone of Gold D. Roger.

"Take it. I know that you will enjoy it." John's sister certainly enjoyed the manga so much that every new volume released, he would buy it for her. He really appreciated his supportive teacher.

He asked at that time, "is it okay?" That was because he had seen the same manga in the hands of a certain problem student.

His teacher coughed before he had answered. "Of course, Jason needs to concentrate on his studies." John couldn't forget the mischievous smile on the face of his teacher.

The vibrating phone in his pockets brought him back from the memory lane. The cocaine forgotten on the table, he accepted the call from the intern.

"Sorry, John, but it was urgent that I needed to call you -" John cut the person off, "Yes, yes, get to the point." He was not really patience to people who cut into his precious alone time.

"Of course. Some bug hunter found a bug in the game." At that John's eyebrows went high up. A bit doubtful he asked, "are you certain of it?"

"Yes, the guy " - the soft voice of the young woman paused as he heard her clicking on her mouse - "Jason Rong, found a way to 'inject malicious code into the chat function by breaking the sanitizer and bypassing the filter'", she quoted, he assumed, from the report. "We already 'reproduced the exploit of the possible high security vulnerability'."

He was surprised. At first he had denied it, but now, he knew that it was legit, because these reports should come from one of the big platforms that hosted the bounties.

"Send me the report now!" He couldn't help himself. He hated bugs, or more accurately, he hated to know that he could have prevented such mistakes as he was the lead developer; his responsibility.

"Yea-yeah, sure thing. Sent!" He sighed heavily, getting the negative energy out of his body, a technique learned from his teacher to deal with anger.

"I'm sorry for snapping at you, Michelle. I just -" She cut in, "of course, don't worry about it. I'm not that weak of a person, you know." With a chuckle she told him.

He could only smile at that. Sometimes, she cared for him like a mother hen. She knew of his problems. He knew that the others made a bet on when they would 'be an item'.

"Alright, I will now get to work, so I will call you again later, Michelle."

"Please don't be hard on yourself. The bug wasn't discovered by some hacker, John." Unsaid went that a malicious skilled hacker wouldn't want to be found out. Not like these days where script kiddies toured the web after easy preys like a pack of hyenas. He hated them the most. A plague of barely controlled hormonal kids that wanted to show off to their friends to get the so called 'street cred' by doing something they could not truly understand.

"Yeah, yeah, mother." He chuckled as he finished the call with a goodbye and a huff from her.

John glanced at the cocaine on the table. He deliberated some time before he sighed as he took the plastic bag away.

After successfully booting his laptop into the Operating System, he instantly opened the source code in his favorite Integrated Developing Environment that was Visual Studio; which was an environment that bundled many useful tools together in one, so that the user could concentrate on the project, while he used Git, a version control tool, mostly used during software development to coordinate with other developers in a team, to check the latest commits of his team members.

Using the shortcut of the IDE, he jumped to the function that controlled the chat environment. Opening the report, he read the important steps out loud, a recommended technique called rubber duck when debugging the code.

"First, I tested the sanitizing plugins by enumerating through different unicode characters until I found some who can be used to break the sanitizer." Of course, he should have known that but he didn't thought of it at the time. Hindsight was 20/20 as they say. He used inbuilt IDE filter to search for the custom developed plugins. His other team members already fixed that particular shameful hole. He looked at the fix to make sure that all cases were handled. Sure enough, his team was reliable, even if they liked to party around.

He could follow the train of thought the reporter went through as he checked line by line. Such reports were the standards because it was important for the guys in the front lines to read concise instructions to fully reproduce the bug or exploit. That was one of the important guidelines most newcomers on the scene didn't, unfortunately, pay enough attention to it.

This Jason Rong, was an interesting newcomer. John furrowed his brows as he read the name again, in his mind and out loud. He changed the emphasis of the last name until he could visualize the person. That meant he knew him from somewhere, but he didn't remember it.

**Author's Note:**

I am reconsidering the direction I want to write the story as such I attached a poll on my profile. A simple question of writing an original fiction with the foundation I already laid out, or doing a fanfiction of The Gamer. At first, I wanted to write a fanfiction, but after I wrote some plot points I felt that I like the freedom of not being forced into a crutch of using an already established world. That means, I will have to post the story on fictionpress, the sister site, on my account with the same username. Only if I decided to write an original fiction.

If you are on mobile, use the desktop version of the fanfiction url, so that you can see the poll. In short use, the www. of fanfiction.


	6. Reconnaissance

**Reconnaissance**

Without the Sword of Damocles hanging over Jason's head in the form of a due rent, he could finally breath a little easier. His sudden maniacal laugh was his way of releasing all the tensions in his body. He had read that laughing in any way or shape was the most relaxing thing a human could. The act of genuine laughing would release Serotonin, the hormone that ensured happiness in all humans.

So he just laid in his chair while grinning like a loon that escaped the asylum. Until, of course, his stomach rumbled, making its demand all too obvious. Well, he had not eat since hours ago which he should instantly rectify. He hated being hungry. It stemmed all from his childhood.

The psychologist, he had visited with his teacher, had explained to him that it was the defensive mechanism of his brain to process the traumatic experience. And because of that, he ate too much, even if he was already full. It wasn't a stretch to think that he was bullied because of his issue. The nickname 'Fatty' wasn't an endearing one friends would give to others. Fortunately, his classroom teacher agreed with him. As such the bullying didn't went too far like many Hollywood movies would like to make the watchers believe. Of course, he was truly lucky in that sense to have such a teacher.

However, as short as it was, the painful lessons were engraved into his mind. "Humans can be very shallow, indeed." His teacher had remarked as he had been shaking his head, "yet children can even be crueler than any adults."

"I don't want to be known as Fatty, teacher." He had whispered with a downcast look, inspecting his dirty shoes.

His teacher had looked at him with a sad look as he had said, "Of course, even if I have reprimanded them, it doesn't guarantee that others wouldn't not call you that." His teacher had glanced out of the window, staring at the beautiful cherry blossoms.

Jason had fidgeted as the silence had been stretching until his teacher had sighed lightly, then had spoken to him, "what do you see when you look at the trees, Jason?"

"Eh, just pink, I guess, teacher?" He had been given a wry smile, accompanied by a slight chuckle.

"Do you really only see the obvious?" With a stern face he had been asked by his teacher. His teacher always had taken that disappointed tone with him as a warning to be serious. He had once remarked to Jason that there was a time for jokes and a time for business.

A little reprimanded, he had begun to seriously consider the question. He had looked, really looked at the tree. It had been a beautiful scene. The sun shining through the leaves, gave him a sense of peace and wonder. He had been awed by it. As he had taken the full scene, he had seen a gardener trimming the grass with care.

A profound experience, the immortal sage from his novels would have said.

It had not been long before he had seen the way ahead his teacher had wanted him to go.

He had understood the hidden meaning of his teacher. He had appreciated the so often wise counsel from his teacher and even had been calling him a sage in his mind. He believed that if not his teacher, then no one would have deserved the grand title.

"The trees wouldn't be this beautiful if the gardener hadn't groomed it." He had stated. His teacher hadn't said anything, instead had letting him finish his conclusion alone. He had always used that method of teaching the children. He had once said that the human who could think by themselves, instead of letting others do it for him or her, would grasp the very destiny in their hands.

"In the beginning it was ugly, but through the hard work of a careful gardener, it transformed into a beauty." He had glanced at his teacher who had a little smile forming.

"Go on, Jason Rong." He had been encouraged by his teacher. "Take your time, don't rush it."

"I am F-Fatty now, but if, no, when I persevere." Jason had not needed to say the rest, because he had understood what he would have to do.

He hadn't been a person who had liked to work hard. He had been the lazy but intelligent classmate who couldn't been bothered to do the homework in time. Some had been the same, evading hard work with serious dedication.

Sometimes he wished teacher was the father he never had. He once had asked his mother about his missing father. She had answered with a slap to his face. With a sneer, she had told him that his punishment was to be hungry for the day.

He hadn't told his teacher any of this. He had not wanted to burden his teacher once more. His teacher had already helped him enough. He had got Jason admittance into a martial arts club. The reason had been answered by him with, "Martial Arts is not about fighting others but yourself. The last opponent will always be yourself."

Jason had listened. When his teacher always spoke, it was with much needed wisdom.

"Never forget that, Jason Rong. Every battle will be against yourself." To escape 'home' he had applied his energy into learning the discipline. His teacher had not been surprised when he had through his effort alone gained the right to participate in the school wide tournament. Instead, Jason had been greeted with a satisfied smile of his teacher that emboldened him. He had given it his all.

He had won.

Since then he had applied his discipline into other directions. He had not been much interested in computers at first. His mother would never buy him one.

Because he had won the school the tournament, his popularity had changed over night. Male classmates had invited him to the internet cafe while some of the females had been brave enough to confess to him.

The internet cafe was the first time that he saw a computer. His school had of course computers, but they had been forbidden to be used by students.

His classmates had guided him on how to use the machine after they had been gobsmacked by his ignorance at the marvelous piece of human technological prowess. Even to this day, he felt shame.

Jason had been astonished as he discovered the might of the search engine. The internet wouldn't be much without a search engine. It got him so much curious that he had asked his classmate how that software worked, but no one could have answered him at all. They just had known that it worked. They had been users. They had not understood him why it would have mattered if they had known how it worked.

It had irked him. The willfully ignorance. So he had turned to his teacher in the hope that the fog of his ignorance could have been swept away.

Only for his teacher to smirk at him as he had told him, "Jason, you should already know the answer to that." He had known. It had been his teacher's way of telling him that he should have to find his own conclusions.

The sound of his door bell snapped him back to the present. Acknowledging the visitor, he went to open the door. He had ordered from a pizzeria that close by. But more importantly, they cute delivery girls. Yes, that was their marketing at work. Getting pretty girls working for them to get a sizable amount of regular customers. It didn't bothered them that most of the regulars were males. Sex sold.

"Here's the pizza, Mr. Rong!" A cheery voice told him as she handed the wrapping. He could recognize her. Her bubbly personality was unforgettable.

"How's the work, Louise?" He knew that she often loved to talk about her day. Which should been the reason why she was The delivery girl, a mascot some would say.

"The usual, y'know. But! I will get my paycheck in a day! I would finally have enough to pay for a car! I don't know which I will buy though." She ended her enthusiastic reply with a far away tone and a dreamy smile. Yeah, he had forgotten that she was very infectious with her way of smiling.

His smile couldn't have been more natural. It was hard to not smile in front of such personality. He would have to buy the marketing team of the pizzeria beer for that insidious scheme. They've got his respect.

There was a reason why employed people who handled the social interaction with the customers were always the one who spread smiles around. Of course, it wasn't always so, but for the most part the saying that the customer was king held wisdom.

"Well, congratulations. Didn't know you were the person that would want to buy a car, huh." Sure enough, he was surprised.

"Don't misunderstand me, what I want are the electrical models. I heard they improved the battery! I don't need much, but a girl has her needs." His chuckle accompanied her little giggle at the mention of her needs. She was an environment activist in her free time. Her campaign against the mighty oil corporations was very popular with people of diverse walk of life, mostly the young ones. He didn't disagree with her notions that the world shouldn't be dependent on fossil fuels in the few hands. He only was not that optimistic. He couldn't believe that some activists would change the minds of the powerful few.

"Alright, I need to go, Jason! See ya!" He waved back at her as she took the elevator. Of course, he did glance at her behind.

**[OBSERVE]** told him the necessary information that to deduce that she went to the gym daily to get that figure.

Back to his computer, he went to his email client to check the unread emails. Ah, it was the official email from the company. He was now official unemployed.

That didn't surprise him much. Hank's superiors were surely all for cutting the cost, so much that office politics allowed for the termination of the veterans who with their skills held the company afloat for years. He was only employed for 6 months. But that was enough to know the general situation. Better to leave now the sinking boat, instead of staying until it sunk with him.

Out of curiosity, Jason decided to use the skill on the email to find unofficial information if there was any.

**LEVEL UP!**  
**[OBSERVE] Level 2 - Level 3**  
_Can now observe the thoughts behind the written correspondence._

He wasn't sure how he could respond to that little pop up in any way except to close his mouth that was hanging.

Well, that did happen.

"Will level 4 be mind reading or what?" Making fun of something surreal was one of his default responses to impossible experiences.

Oh, the last surreal experience was... He couldn't quite remember anymore for some strange reason and that was worrying. His anxiety went full throttle as he tried to recall at least the date.

But it was of no use. It was as if he was blocked by something.

That got his full attention. He was too young to get such disease, so that only would mean that he was exposed to something supernatural. Something science couldn't explain, well, at least, not completely. It could have been a traumatic experience, but that was impossible. How in the hell would he have gotten a traumatic experience on his way to work.

Even if someone had suicided in front of him in a gross manner. He had seen worse things. So it couldn't be that.

And even using **[OBSERVE]** on himself told him nothing.

**[SIDE QUEST ALERT: I have no fogging clue!]**  
Someone had sealed some of your memories. Find a way to unseal it.  
**Time limit: No time constraints**  
**Completion reward: 1000 Exp + Unsealed memories + Passive skill: [? ? ? MIND]**  
**Failure: ? ? ?**

**[Do you want to accept or decline the quest?]**  
_Warning: You will not get the quest again regarding your memories. _

He should have been a nervous wreck, barely breathing, yet instead he was at his calmest he ever had been. Unfortunately, the tutorial would have to be completed by him before he could assess his status page that would yield more information.

He didn't like it all. Someone had mucked around with his memories. He knew that the blue boxes were surely something supernatural or let's say advanced alien science. So it would follow that the being who had sealed his memories was either a supernatural creature or an alien.

He, of course, had accepted the quest right away. He needed to know. It was just a principle of his. The need to know was ingrained since his birth. And he didn't like that someone had fucked with his mind.

"Motherfucker, I will find you." Jason declared.

His promise done, he took a deep breath, even when he did not felt greatly agitated. He could only guess that some buff or passive skill had calmed him. However, it was little limited because it couldn't stop his rising anger that transformed into loud cursing in every language he knew.

He felt a little conflicted. The passive skill or whatever it was that could calm him down so he could think rationally, was a blessing. On the other hand, he didn't like such mental manipulations. After all, what was real and what wasn't?

In the end, he applied the principle of dividing the problem in smaller problems that he could solve step by step. First, he would have to complete the tutorial while leveling his one, but important skill up. After that, he could begin to complete the side quest. It was side quest for a reason. As much as it pained him, he knew that he shouldn't been sidetracked by a side quest.

"Being sidetracked by a side quest, c'est la vie." Humor was his most used weapon to handle additional stress.

Well, part 3 of the main quest had one month time limit, so enough time for him that he could first do a deep reconnaissance of the target by stalking him online and offline too.

Using the search machine, Google, he queried after his ex-boss Hank Grunner. It spat surprisingly amount of results. To get a more accurate read, he tried to add additional information until he got an interesting old news article from 2010.

It was indeed about his ex-boss. It detailed a particular court case over a mother who accused Hank of child molestation. Jason didn't expected such result of a simple search. Actually, he should have, now that he thought about it. He wasn't very familiar with Hank, but he heard some rumors. Never confirmed it. After all, at that time, he was already on thin ice with Hank because of the complaints of his colleagues. Laughable complaints, but he suspected that Hank had singled him out.

Although, he didn't have enough information to form a complete picture about his ex-boss. Oh, he did use **[OBSERVE]** to clear up the doubts that it wasn't just some fake article, even if it was from a reputable source. In this day and age, it wasn't surprising if the majority of the news industry just outright faked news or spread half truths to get the necessary emotional reactions of their audience for their revenue.

Jason would have to dig deeper. Perhaps he could use a specialized search by querying for Hank's work email. Who knew in what sites his ex-boss had registered with the email. It was certainly a possibility.

Search machines were powerful, he reiterated because some of them were even programmed to accept more advance option to query for certain results. This was known as Google Dorking after the popular search machine. It was coined by Johnny Long dating back to 2002 who discovered a way to abuse it. These search operators could be used to exploit insecure websites or even devices that were connected to the internet like IP cameras.

For example, Jason could have use the operator inurl to search for certain strings that would lead him to the page of a IP based camera.

**"inurl:top. htm inurl:currenttime"**

It was a good example of a list of insecure IP cams. The top. htm was a HTML source file often found in navigation frames in a website. The currenttime was found in URLs after ? that meant that it was a parameter. The reason was that "top .htm?currenttime=" would been found in every insecure IP cam.

The other example were insecure web applications that exposed the login page for the administration to the public. For example, he could just use the operator intitle: to search for the default title found in such admin panels.

So to search for websites that would expose Hank's email he could use the intext: operator to accomplish the task.

The results were sparse, but noteworthy as they were all forums based on a invite-only system. That made him suspicious.

**[OBSERVE]** came to his rescue.

As he got the information, Jason's hands curled into fists.


End file.
